This inverts the situation in previous pre-release versions of the operating system for the smartphone and tablet market. In those earlier versions, available since April, Ubuntu resided in a separate area, which was switched to from Android using change root (chroot). The Ubuntu development team has thus labelled the recent change "container flip" and refers to the new images as "flipped images".

The new system is, according to the release announcement, not yet up to the standard of the previous image, but the developers believe that it is good enough to make the switch to booting Ubuntu directly – which is how Ubuntu Touch is intended to work in later versions.